Trump’s Kicks Off Retribution Tour With New Order Targeting Critics

Donald Trump is taking revenge against two officials from his first term.  

On Wednesday, the president issued directives stripping the security clearances of Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor and ordering the Department of Justice to open investigations against them, characterizing Taylor’s criticisms of him as “treasonous” and calling Krebs “a significant bad-faith actor.” 

Krebs, who ran the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, affirmed Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020, saying at the time that “claims [of fraud] either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent” and authorizing a statement from CISA that the election was secure. Trump subsequently fired him by tweet.

Later, Krebs was a witness for the House January 6 committee, providing information on securing the 2020 election, testifying that “Republican officials, senior officials, including the former president, lied to the American people about the security of the 2020 election.”

Krebs now works at cybersecurity company SentinelOne, and Trump’s order not only targets him but strips the security clearances of anyone at the company who works with him. As Trump signed the order against Krebs Wednesday, he let everyone know that he still isn’t over losing in 2020, calling the election “rigged.” 

“It was proven by so many different ways in so many different forms,” Trump said. “We’re going to find out about this guy too, because this guy is a wise guy.”

Taylor famously wrote an anonymous New York Times op-ed criticizing Trump in 2018 while working for the Department of Homeland Security. He left the Trump administration in 2019 and, upon revealing his identity, wrote a book detailing the chaos he observed from Trump. He went on to endorse Biden before the 2020 election, although Trump on Wednesday said, “I barely remember him.” 

“Somebody that went out and wrote a book and said all sorts of terrible things that were all lies,” Trump said. “I think he’s guilty of treason.”

The order against Taylor is so broad that it even suspends the security clearances of “individuals at entities associated with Taylor, including the University of Pennsylvania, pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.”

On X, Taylor posted that “I said this would happen.” 

“Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path. Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point,” Taylor wrote. 

All of this shows that Trump would not only escape consequences for his actions if he was reelected but that he always planned to take revenge on his critics if he was able to return to the White House. Now the checks on his power are minimal at best.

Many were surprised Wednesday by Donald Trump’s decision to put a 90-day pause on a majority of his sweeping tariffs on other countries (with the exception of China), but only one person was in the midst of defending those very tariffs to Congress.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer sat before the House Ways and Means Committee, where he’d been testifying for nearly four hours in defense of Trump’s “reciprocal tariff” policy, when the president announced the pause.

Democratic Representative Steven Horsford was the first to question Greer about the pause, and asked when exactly he had been made aware that Trump planned to walk back his sweeping tariffs.

“I understood the decision was made a few minutes ago,” Greer said, noting it had been “under discussion.”

“So did you know that this was ‘under discussion,’ and why did you not include this in your opening remarks?” Horsford said.

Greer said he wouldn’t “divulge the contents” of his discussions with the president.

Horsford pressed for details from Greer, but the trade representative couldn’t provide any information on the 90-day deadline, saying he didn’t know all the details because he’d been in the hearing all day.

“So the trade representative hasn’t spoken to the president of the United States about a global reordering of trade? And yet he’s—but yet he announced it on a tweet!” Horsford said above Greer’s protests. “WTF! Who’s in charge?!”

“The president of the United States is in charge,” Greer replied.

“And what do you know about those details? It looks like your boss just pulled out the rug from under you and paused the tariff—the taxes on the American people,” Horsford said. “There is no strategy! You just found out three seconds ago, sitting there; we saw you!”

The Nevada Democrat continued to press Greer on his failure to disclose Trump’s plan at any point during the lengthy hearing. “If you came here knowing that these tariffs were going to be turned off, why didn’t you include that in your opening statement, why didn’t you reference that as part of your testimony?”

Greer repeated that he wouldn’t discuss his conversations with the president.

“These were specific questions. We asked you all along, what’s the strategy? These are real consequences for the American people and small businesses,” Horsford said, exasperated.

“This is amateur hour, and it needs to stop! What does this even mean for your negotiating strategy? How are you in charge of negotiation if the president is tweeting about this, wherever the hell he is?”

When Horsford asked Greer directly if he knew it was happening, Greer would only repeat that they’d been “discussing it.”

“There was no strategy, there was no plan. The president chose to take actions that he didn’t have the authority to take. He has put our economy in near collapse,” Horsford said.

He then asked Greer about the issue on everyone’s mind. Earlier Wednesday, amid a roiling stock market, Trump had advised his followers on Truth Social that it was a “great time to buy.” After announcing the 90-day pause on tariffs, the market shot back up.

“Is this market manipulation?” Horsford asked.

“No,” Greer replied.

“Why not? If it was a plan, if it was always the plan, how is this not market manipulation?” Horsford asked.

“It’s not market manipulation, Sir,” Greer insisted.

“Well then what is it, because it sure is not a strategy!” Horsford said.

“We’re trying to reset the global trade system—” Greer said, before he was cut off.

“And what has that done? And how have you achieved any of that? But to enact enormous harm on the American people, which was our concern from the very beginning!” Horsford said, adding, “So, if it’s not market manipulation, what is it? Who’s benefiting? What billionaire just got richer?”

Horsford noted that all the Republican members of the committee had left “because they don’t want to defend this!”

On X, Horsford posted a picture of Greer conferring with his colleague, captioning it: “What it looks like when you’re the country’s trade representative testifying before Congress and you find out Trump changed his mind on tariffs.”

“This is reckless governing. There is no strategy and it’s obvious this is amateur hour,” Horsford wrote.

The Trump administration is now going to screen immigrants’ social media as grounds for denying immigration benefits, including international students and people applying for permanent residency.

The Department of Homeland Security announced the move in a press release Wednesday afternoon, saying that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would be taking action, effective immediately, against “antisemitic activity on social media and the physical harassment of Jewish individuals.”

“DHS will enforce all relevant immigration laws to the maximum degree, to protect the homeland from extremists and terrorist aliens, including those who support antisemitic terrorism, violent antisemitic ideologies and antisemitic terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, or Ansar Allah aka: ‘the Houthis,’” the statement read.

The move follows the visa revocations and detention of students who have advocated for Palestine, such as Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, as well as the arrest and detention of Columbia University graduate and permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil. In both cases, the government made no indication that it has followed due process, and the two are not alone: Secretary of State Marco Rubio claims to have revoked the visas of over 300 students before Wednesday’s announcement.

Now DHS will begin policing the opinions of anyone seeking to study in the United States, ostensibly on grounds of opposing “antisemitic terrorism.” In reality, there is no proof that Khalil, Öztürk, or many other targeted students engaged in terrorism. Rather, the Trump administration has redefined terrorism to mean opposition to Israel’s brutal war in Gaza and support for Palestinian self-determination. In effect, the message is that immigrants and visitors to the U.S. no longer have the right to free speech.

Trump may have accidentally confessed to insider trading and market manipulation on Truth Social. 

“THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT,” the president wrote on Wednesday, a mere four hours before announcing a 90-day pause on most retaliatory tariffs except for China, yet another market-shocking announcement that caused stocks to shoot up. 

Insider trading is a very illegal practice that involves using special or private information to give yourself an advantage in buying and selling stocks. Someone with knowledge of an economic policy change that would cause the markets to shoot back up would be posting about how great a time it is to buy right before the policy change happened. This particular situation looks like the opposite of a pump and dump: a poop and scoop. This is when an exclusive group of people with private knowledge do whatever they can to drive stock prices down—like announcing debilitating global tariffs—and then buy stocks up strategically before the price goes up again. And with this administration, the corruption is completely out in the open. 

“Trump is creating giant market fluctuations with his on-again, off-again tariffs. These constant gyrations in policy provide dangerous opportunities for insider trading,” Senator Adam Schiff wrote on X. “Who in the administration knew about Trump’s latest tariff flip flop ahead of time? Did anyone buy or sell  stocks, and profit at the public’s expense? I’m writing to the White House—the public has a right to know.”

“Trump’s Truth Social now basically promotes veiled insider trading on upcoming announcements,” wrote health and economics expert Eric Feigl-Ding. “Trump’s benefactors are gleefully watching.”

The New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin called it two days ago on CNBC. *

“Given what the government’s been doing, and what this administration’s been doing, it would not shock me—and I hate to speculate—if we were to find out that a whole bunch of people who work in Washington as our elected leaders … ultimately sold stocks last week, or potentially worse than that, shorted the market.” 

The Trump administration—after crashing the global stock market and eroding U.S. legitimacy—is attempting to spin this as a win. 

“Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

* This article originally misstated Sorkin’s first name.

Donald Trump is once again the laughingstock of the internet after his shocking decision Wednesday to issue a 90-day pause on some of his sweeping tariffs—with the exception of China—after the White House insisted for days that the president had no intention to hit the brakes. 

“Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, as she tried to spin Trump’s sudden reversal as part of a long-unfolding plan to either boost domestic manufacturing or something else entirely—actually, it’s become kind of unclear. 

Online people were quick to make what have now become running jokes about Trump’s so-called “art,” and the Trump administration’s mind-boggling insistence that his tariffs are at once a brilliant negotiation tactic and a legitimate policy meant to bolster the U.S. economy. 

“Oh my god she did the meme,” wrote Tahra Jirari, the director of economic analysis at the Chamber of Progress, on X.  

“The Art of the Deal is panicking and reversing course less than 24 hours after tariffs go into effect?” wrote Aaron Reichlin-Melchick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, in a post on X. 

Pod Save America host Jon Favreau also took aim at Trump’s deal-making prowess, writing, on X, “Art of the Deal: 1) Impose massive tariffs on nearly every country that crash the markets and create the conditions for global economic collapse 2) Make zero deals with zero countries 3) Pause tariffs 4) VICTORY!!”

While Trump bragged about the scores of foreign leaders who’d come to kiss the ring, many foreign officials said that they’d received no reply to their requests to make a deal with the Trump administration, according to Politico. 

With Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s hollow claims that Trump’s decision was not a response to the last week’s tumultuous stock market, many struggled to understand Trump’s rationale in power-checking foreign countries. 

Meanwhile, others suggested that Trump, having urged his followers on Truth Social that it was a “great time to buy” earlier Wednesday, was attempting to create a window for his allies to buy low, knowing he was about to rescind his tariffs.

But Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz pointed out that there was likely no method to Trump’s madness at all. 

“OUR PLAN IS WORKING PERFECTLY AND IS JUST A NEGOTIATING TACTIC BUT IT IS ALSO GOING TO BE PERMANENT AND WE WILL BE THE WORLD LEADER IN TEXTILES AND NOW THERE IS A PAUSE AND EVERYONE NEEDS TO CHILL BUT ALSO WE WILL NEVER BACK DOWN AAAAAAHHHHHH,” Schatz wrote in a hilariously candid post on X.